Books
Neighbourhood Thematic Poetry (from Scholastic)
Exploring our World Neighbourhoods and Communities (Scholastic)
I also checked out various books about firefighters, police officers, grocery stores, gas stations, and any other books I could find relating to our community.
Activities
Math
I created a map on a large piece of paper. There's a picture of a dog on the bottom, circles that made a path up to a vet office at the top. Once the student solved an addition problem they could move the dog one space toward the vet. Each student had three problems to solve. Once everyone solved their three problems the dog would get to the vet!
Grocery store - we created a grocery store in the house keeping centre. Using play money the students could visit the store and buy groceries. They could shop or run the store.
Restaurant - we also built a restaurant in the house centre. The students created menues and took turns being customers and restaurant workers. One student tried to sneak out without paying and the restaurant workers made him "wash dishes" to pay for his dinner!
Build our Community - the students used the blocks and vehicles to build a community. They needed to remember the important buildings we had visited around our community, and roads for the people to get around. They also build our community and buildings in the sand table.
Writing
Who lives in my community? writing book - (Police officers) live in my community. They ____________. The students then draw a picture of what their community helper does, in this example a police officer. They might write that this person helps people, ect.
As mentioned, the students made restaurant menues by making up a restaurant name and then glueing out pictures of food into their menues.
We went for many walks around our community and visited many places: the grocery store took us on a tour of the bakery and meat department, we went into the police department, and we were supposed to go to Dairy Queen but it was pouring rain so we couldn't walk there. After our trips we journaled each place and what the people there did to help us.
Art
Body Tracing - the students traced each others' bodies and then painted themselves to be a community helper. We had police officers, vets, fire fighters, teachers, a dog walker, a dancer, and many more. I cut them all out and put them up around a room with a label (name) the (helper) - for example, Austin the Police Officer. This ended up taking the students quite a bit longer than I thought, but they loved them and the parents thought they were great.
Songs and Games
Police Officer, Find my Child - One student was chosen to be a police officer and left the room. We chose a student to be the lost child and one to be the parent. The parent called the police back in and had to describe the lost child, hopefully without staring right at the child and giving it away! At first it was pretty obvious, but with some practice they were able to describe the child better.
